The present invention relates to controllers providing adjustable frequency currents to loads and more specifically, to a method and apparatus to regulate torque provided to loads.
Induction Motors
Induction motors have broad application in industry, particularly when large horsepower is needed. A three phase induction motor receives three phases of electrical voltage to produce a rotating magnetic stator field. A rotor contained within the stator field experiences an induced current (hence the term induction) which generates a rotor field. The interaction of the rotor field and the stator field causes rotation of the rotor.
A common rotor design is a “squirrel cage winding” in which axial conductive bars are connected at either end by shorting rings to form a generally cylindrical structure. The flux of the stator field cutting across the conductive bars induces cyclic current flows through the bars and across the shorting rings. The cyclic current flows in turn produce the rotor field.
The use of this induced current to generate the rotor field eliminates the need for slip rings or brushes to provide power to the rotor, making the design relatively maintenance free.
Field Oriented Control of Induction Machines
To a first approximation, the torque and speed of an induction motor may be controlled by changing the frequency of the driving voltage and thus the angular rate of the rotating stator field. Generally, for a given torque, increasing the stator field rate will increase the speed of the rotor (which follows the stator field). Alternatively, for a given rotor speed, increasing the frequency of the stator field will increase the torque by increasing the slip, that is the difference in speed between the rotor and the stator field. An increase in slip increases the rate at which flux lines are cut by the rotor, increasing the rotor generated field and thus the force or torque between the rotor and stator fields.
Referring to FIG. 1, the rotating phasor 1 of the stator magneto motive force (“mmf”) will generally have some angle α with respect to the phasor of rotor flux 2. The torque generated by the motor will be proportional to the magnitudes of these phasors 1 and 2 but also will be a function of their angle α. The maximum torque is produced when phasors 1 and 2 form a right angle to each other (e.g., α=90°) whereas zero torque is produced if these phasors are aligned (e.g., α=0°). Phasor 1 may therefore be usefully decomposed into a torque producing component 3 perpendicular to phasor 2 and a flux component 4 parallel to rotor flux phasor 2.
These two components 3 and 4 of the stator mmf are proportional, respectively, to two stator currents iqs, a torque producing current and ids, a flux producing current, which may be represented by orthogonal vectors in the rotating frame of reference (synchronous frame of reference) of the stator flux having slowly varying magnitudes. Accordingly, in controlling an induction motor, it is generally desired to control not only the frequency of the applied voltage (hence the speed of the rotation of the stator flux phasor 1) but also the phase of the applied voltage relative to the current flow and hence the division of the currents through the stator windings into the iqs and ids components. Control strategies that attempt to independently control the currents iqs and ids are generally termed field oriented control strategies (“FOC”).
While torque regulation has been contemplated in the past, unfortunately the regulation schemes adopted have not been very accurate. To this end, generally, at speeds below the rated motor speed, it has been assumed that the developed motor torque has been equal to a reference torque value. At speeds above rated speed, torque has been regulated in a pseudo open loop manner by dividing the torque reference value by an estimate of motor flux reduction value. More specifically, the torque reference is divided by a term proportional to the motor operating speed that is an estimate of the reduction in motor flux. Unfortunately, the term proportional to operating speed is a relatively inaccurate estimate of motor flux reduction and therefore torque regulation via one of these schemes is not very accurate. In addition, while system torque can change rapidly, operating frequency changes relatively slowly and therefore, in some cases, stability problems have been known to occur when operating frequency is used as an estimator of flux reduction. While such inaccurate torque regulators may work in some applications, such limited regulating capabilities are not acceptable for other applications.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have a system that estimates torque quickly and accurately.